3/19/10 – ADG: Convicted child sex offender Tony Alamo’s attorneys get more filing time
Arkansas Democrat Gazette
March 19, 2010
By The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Alamo’s attorneys get more filing time
Appeal argument now due April 16
Attorneys for imprisoned evangelist Tony Alamo have been granted an additional four weeks to file a brief challenging his conviction on charges of taking underage girls across state lines for sex.
Alamo, the 75-year-old leader of a ministry with headquarters in southwestern Arkansas, was convicted in July on 10 counts of taking underage girls across state lines. He was sentenced in November to 175 years in prison and fined $250,000. At a hearing in January, U.S. District Judge Harry Barnes also ordered Alamo to pay $500,000 in restitution to each of his five victims.
The brief supporting Alamo’s appeal had been due today, but defense attorney John Wesley Hall Jr. of Little Rock said in a letter to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals clerk on Thursday that he and attorney Don Ervin of Houston, Texas, need more time to prepare it.
Hall noted that the trial transcript is 1,900 pages. He also said Alamo, who he said is in a federal prison in Tucson, Ariz., “for medical reasons,” “desires to help participate in the crafting of the argument in his brief.”
“Mr. Ervin and I visited him last Friday,” Hall wrote. “We expect to visit with him again in three weeks. Tuscon is two time zones away from us and it is not all that easy to get there.”
Hall added that Assistant U.S. Attorney Kyra Jenner had no objection to the extension of filing time. In an order issued later Thursday, Clerk Michael Gans granted Hall’s request and extended the deadline for filing the brief to April 16.